A user involved in a project of moderate to high complexity may need to deal with a large number of assets. For example, a project to produce a product catalog may include numerous page layouts. A compound document may include one or more page layouts, each of which may include versions of photographic, textual, and graphical assets. Each asset may have one or more prior, historical versions, which represent snapshots of the asset at a given time. Historical versions are sometimes used to revert to an asset's previous state following destructive changes to a version of an asset.
At times, an editor, layout designer, or client may want to have the option to select among several historical versions of a particular asset for inclusion in a final document (e.g., a page layout). To provide the ability to select between historical versions of an asset, each of the historical versions being considered may need to be converted into a new, separate asset.
In some situations, a user may be working with a compound document whose own historical versions include earlier versions of photographic, textual, or graphical assets. When a user wants to access an earlier version of a compound document, any earlier version of an included asset also should be represented with accuracy. For an earlier version of an asset to be available as a separate entity, the user may need to convert it into a new, separate asset.
In other situations, a user may need to create parallel renditions of an asset. For example, a user may need to create a high resolution rendition for a print application, and a low resolution rendition for a web application. Again, the parallel renditions may need to be represented using separate assets.
In each of the cases described above, using manual processes, a user may need to create new, separate assets from multiple historical versions. Once created, the status of each new asset is maintained manually.